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As you and your co-managers approach the task of making decisions for an upcoming year, we
strongly recommend using the following procedure. The recommended steps come from our
experiences of having administered hundreds of simulations for thousands of participants, and
they ought to work well for you²especially in the first few decisions when you are trying to
figure things out.

  Make a printout of the GLO-BUS Statistical Review (skip this step in making the Year
6 decision since the first GSR issue appears with the Year 6 results). Review your company¶s
performance on the 3-page scoreboard of company performances. Scrutinize the numbers on the
Global Overview page, the Comparative Financial Performances page, and the Benchmarks
page. There are Help/More Info links for each report that provide line-by-line explanations of
each item and how to make effective use of the information on these reports. Read these
Help/More Info screens until you are confident you understand the numbers and what they tell
you about the strong and weak aspects of your company¶s performance. Appoint a company co-
manager as chief information officer responsible for keeping copies of each year¶s results in a
binder for future reference²the GSRs for past years are not available once decisions for the
upcoming year have been processed.

  Make printouts of the Company Operating Report (ideally one printout for each
company co-manager). This 6-page report provides you with all the details relating to your
company¶s operations the previous year. The Company Operating Reports consist of a
Production Cost report (1 page), a North American Operations report (1 page), a Europe-Africa
Operations report (1 page), an Asia-Pacific Operations report (1 page), a Latin American
Operations report (1 page), and complete financial statements (1 page). Studying these reports²
especially for Year 5 when you are trying to get a grip on your company¶s business²needs to be
automatic. There are Help/More Info links for each report that provide line-by-line explanations
of each item and how to make effective use of the information on these reports. Read these
Help/More Info screens until you are confident you understand the numbers and what they tell
you about the strong and weak aspects of your company¶s performance.

  Always, without fail, make extensive use of the capabilities of the Competitive
Intelligence Reports. Start by making at least one printout of the Quarterly Snapshots showing
the competitiveness of your company in each of the 4 geographic region (four 1-page printouts
are needed here²one for each geographic region). These four pages show your company¶s
competitiveness (as measured by your competitive effort on price, advertising, number of
models, tech support, and so forth) vis-à-vis the industry averages for all companies competing
in the region. These reports also display maps indicating your company market position vis-à-vis
rivals in each product segment (entry-level and multi-featured cameras) and lists your company¶s
competitive strengths and weaknesses in each geographic region. Plainly, this is very important
information. With a couple of clicks, you can view Quarterly Snapshots showing how any
company¶s competitive efforts compare to the industry-averages in any geographic market of
interest and identifying the rival company¶s competitive strengths and weaknesses in that
geographic market. Use the Company Analysis menu selection to view or print a close rival¶s
decisions on each competitive effort measure (price, advertising, P/Q rating, warranty period,
special promotions, and so on) for the most recent 12 quarters. The more you and your co-
managers study the decision patterns of key competitors and are able to anticipate their moves,
the better you will be prepared to counter their strategies with offensive and defensive moves of
your own. Competitive markets are very much business battlefields where success often depends
on outwitting and outmaneuvering rivals. It is very difficult to outcompete rivals unless you
exert the effort to carefully assess what they are doing in the marketplace. The Competitive
Intelligence Reports arm you with scouting reports on rival companies which, if used to good
advantage, can point the way to actions that will improve your company¶s competitiveness and
financial performance. j


 










 

















  Always, without fail, print out copies of the Company Operating Reports and digest the
information of your company¶s performance, looking specifically for the strengths and
weaknesses in your company¶s prior year performance. In particular, see how your company¶s
costs compare with the industry low/average/high cost measures on the Benchmarks page of the
GSR. There are Help/More Info links for each report that provide line-by-line explanations of
each item and how to make effective use of the information on these reports. '

 


 

 
 





 







 


 
 

 
  . The company¶s chief information officer should retain a
copy of each year¶s Operating Reports in a binder for in case you have occasion to refer back to
these results later.

  Now, you and your co-managers are ready to begin the decision-making process for the
upcoming year and should have a pretty solid idea at this juncture of some of the things you need
to correct and what it will take to improve your company¶s competitive and performance in the
upcoming year. Be sure you check out the upcoming year¶s performance targets for earnings per
share, ROI, stock price, credit rating, and image rating so that you can put together a set of
strategic decisions that will result in meeting or beating these performance targets and thus score
well on the Investor Expectations Standard. We suggest moving through the Decision screens in
the order they appear on the decision menu, entering ³trial´ decisions for each decision box.
You will always need to cycle back and forth through the decision screens to arrive at a cohesive
and compatible set of decisions that hold promise for producing good financial performance.

Each time you make a decision entry, an assortment of on-screen calculations will instantly show
the projected effects on unit sales, revenues, market share, unit costs, profit, earnings per share,
ROI, and other pertinent factors. Where appropriate, there are separate supporting calculations
for entry-level and multi-featured cameras. 2











 










 



. They provide instant
feedback on the likely outcomes and consequences of alternative decisions and are intended to
support wiser decision-making and strategizing on your part. Often, it will take a minute or two
to digest all the changes in the on-screen calculations that occur when you make a particularly
significant decision entry²the best way to deal with this is to put the prior number back in the
decision box, then re-enter the trial decision and watch the changes in the on-screen calcs a
second or third time until you determine whether the incremental impacts are, on the whole,
satisfactory or not. No decision entry is ³final´ until the decision deadline passes, so you can
enter as many numbers in the decision boxes and try out as many different decision combinations
as you wish in searching for a ³winning´ strategy and set of decision entries across all decision
screens

  Make it a point to experiment with alternative actions and strategies²you can cycle
back through the decision screens and run different ³what-if we do this´ scenarios, comparing
the outcomes on the bottom group of onscreen projections of revenues, profits, EPS, ROI, credit
rating image rating, and change in cash position to search out a decision combination that holds
the 

 and 


 chance of meeting or beating the Investor Expectations performance
targets.

  As you near a final decision, you might want to take a couple of minutes to review
some of the numbers in the 

 Company Operating Reports, just to confirm that the
decision combination you are contemplating is as good as it looks. We suggest checking the
projected Production Cost Report and comparing the projected costs for entry-level and multi-
featured cameras for the upcoming year to see if they are higher/lower than the prior year and if
costs are moving in the right direction. Check projected Operating Reports to see if profits in
each geographic region are better/worse than the prior year; check the projected costs against
those in the Benchmarks report to see if your costs compare favorably with the industry lows and
industry averages for that cost item. If you spot areas where costs are rising and/or profitability
is headed downhill, you may want to reconsider some of the decisions to see if you can turn
things around. When your reach a final set of decisions, it is always a good idea to print a copy
of the projected Company Operating Reports. Then, when the decisions are processed and the
results become available, you can compare the numbers in the 

 Company Operating
Reports with the numbers in the  Company Operating Reports (as per Step 4 above)²
having the ability to see ³what went wrong´ should your company have a bad year is important
(and you really can¶t diagnose what went wrong without a copy of the projected Company
Operating Reports to nail down the differences between what was projected and what actually
happened).

  When all of your decision entries and projected outcomes look satisfactory, simply
click on the Print button and select ³print all decisions´²this printout shows all your decision
entries and also lists projections of the company¶s year-end performance for net revenues, net
profits, EPS, ROI, credit rating, image rating, and change in cash position. Retaining a copy of
the ³Decision Printout´ allows you to confirm what your decision entries were and how well you
expect your company to do. 
 

 



  







 
. Then press the Save icon²this will save all decision
entries to the GLO-BUS server (a message will appear on the screen indicating the decisions
have been saved successfully). When you are ready to end the session, exit the program by
clicking on the Exit button; the program will automatically ask you whether you want to save
any entries made since the last time the Save button was clicked; indicate yes or no (usually yes!)
and continue with the exit procedure.

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  It is feasible (often normal) for co-managers to log-on simultaneously and each
be engaged in entering decisions (either on adjacent PCs in a university lab or at their own
residences miles apart). When you log-on and get to the lobby of the corporate office where you
are greeted, GLO-BUS indicates if other co-managers are currently logged on. Needless to say,
this may be a time when co-managers need to check in with one another, especially if they at
working at different locations. Instant messaging can be used by co-managers logged-on
simultaneously at separate locations. If one co-manager that is logged on when you are clicks on
the Save icon and saves decisions to the ï
 !" server you will be notified the next time you
press the Save icon to save any decisions²the notification gives you the choice of (1) overriding
the co-manager¶s saved decision entries by saving your decisions to the server or (2) importing
them onto your decision screens. Again, 







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 Usually the results of each year¶s decisions are accessible within one hour
of the decision deadline.